A vaginal anatomy typically includes a vaginal entry and a vaginal wall, where such an entry defines an orifice therethrough, while the wall includes muscles and defines a vaginal cavity which extends inwardly from the entry and which is also bound by such muscles. The entry forms a clitoris thereon, and a paraurethral gland of an urethral sponge of a clitoris (also called the Grafenberg spot or G spot) is believed to be defined on the wall. The vaginal wall is formed essentially of two sets of muscles, the former extending longitudinally while the latter encircling the vagina. These muscles are specifically termed as “pubococygenus” and “levator ani” and are located immediately adjacent to the vagina. These muscles have general appearance of a hammock with its two ends connected to the sides of a pelvis. In particular, the pubococygenus is basically a sphincter muscle which passes through a middle third of the vagina and runs in a circular band, with a ring-like ridges forming a part of a urethra and anus. For simplicity of illustration, this vaginal anatomy is to be referred to as “a pelvic structure,” the vaginal entry as an “entry,” and the vaginal wall as a “wall.” In addition, such a pelvic structure is referred to as the “standard pelvic structure” or simply the “pelvic structure” hereinafter for simplicity of illustration, unless otherwise specified.
Among devices currently available in the market for enhancing sexual functioning are dildos, vaginal exercise bars, and prostate stimulators. These devices generally provide stimuli from friction upon manipulation of their stimulators or by pressure due to distension of the pelvic cavity effected by a volume of such stimulators.
For example, manual pelvic relaxing devices have been proposed in various configurations as disclosed in various prior art such as, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 3,996,930 to Sekulich, U.S. Pat. No. 5,690,603 to Kain, U.S. Pat. No. 5,690,604 to Barnett, U.S. Pat. No. 5,853,362 to Jacobs, U.S. Pat. No. 6,203,491 to Uribe, U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2005/0187431 by Hudson, U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2005/0228218 by Skidmore et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,540,667 to Hickman, and the like. Being manual, users have to manually move such devices in and out of the pelvic cavity and/or around the pelvic opening.
In order to overcome inconvenience thereof, various automatic mechanisms have been added to the pelvic relaxation devices. In one class of examples, electric motors or electromagnetic vibration mechanisms have been incorporated to various automatic devices for effecting vibration as disclosed in various prior art such as, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 3,451,391 to Tavel, U.S. Pat. No. 3,504,665 to Bakunin et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,626,931 to Bysakh, U.S. Pat. No. 3,669,100 to Csanad, U.S. Pat. No. 3,991,751 to O'Rourke, U.S. Pat. No. 4,788,968 to Rudashevsky et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,067,480 to Woog et al, U.S. Pat. No. 6,056,705 to Stigar-Brown, U.S. Pat. Appl. Pub. 2004/0034315 to Chen, U.S. Pat. Appl. Pub. 2004/0127766 to Chen, and the like.
In another class of example, automatic pelvic relaxing devices have used various mechanisms of converting rotational movements generated by such electric motors into translational movements for effecting horizontal and/or vertical translation of their stimulators. Several examples of such prior art include U.S. Pat. No. 4,722,327 to Harvey, U.S. Pat. No. 4,790,296 to Segal, U.S. Pat. No. 5,076,261 to Black, U.S. Pat. No. 5,725,473 to Taylor, U.S. Pat. No. 6,142,929 to Padgett, U.S. Pat. No. 6,422,993 to Hudson, U.S. Pat. No. 6,866,645 to Lee, and U.S. Pat. Appl. Pub. 2004/0147858
Various automatic pelvic relaxing devices have also used various mechanisms for converting rotational movements generated by such electric motors into lateral movements for effecting horizontal translation of their stimulators along a direction generally normal to axes of such stimulators. Several examples of such prior art are U.S. Pat. No. 5,460,597 to Hopper, U.S. Pat. No. 5,470,303 to Leonard et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,851,175 to Nickell.
Other therapeutic devices, although developed for various purposes other than pelvic relaxing, seem to have been used as alternatives as such conventional pelvic relaxing devices. In one class of examples, various manual or vibration devices have been disclosed to train or heal pelvic muscles as exemplified in U.S. Pat. No. 3,598,106 to Buning, U.S. Pat. No. 4,241,912 to Mercer et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 4,574,791 to Mitchener. In another class of examples, various devices have been developed for massaging various portions of a human body as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,055,170 to Nohmura, U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,853 to Iwamoto et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,846,158 to Teranishi, U.S. Pat. No. 4,911,149 to Borodulin et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,063,911 to Teranishi, and the like. In another class, massage devices have also been devised to provide translational movements as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,002,164 to Bradley, U.S. Pat. No. 5,085,207 to Fiore, U.S. Pat. No. 5,676,637 to Lee, and the like. In another class of examples, various devices have also been arranged to provide rotating, tapping, swinging and/or swivelling movements as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,162,675 to Kawada, U.S. Pat. No. 6,632,185 to Chen, U.S. Pat. No. 4,088,128 to Mabuchi, U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,737 to Mabuchi, U.S. Pat. No. 4,827,914 to Kamazawa, U.S. Pat. No. 4,834,075 to Guo et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,183,034 to Yamasaki et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 6,402,710 to Hsu. A vacuum device of U.S. Pat. No. 4,033,338 to Igwebike as well as a balloon device of U.S. Pat. No. 4,050,449 to Castellana et al. have also been proposed.
Regardless of their detailed mechanisms and/or movements effected thereby, all of these prior art devices suffer from common drawbacks. Excluding those manual ones, typical automatic devices consist of main modules and control modules which operatively couple with the main modules by wire for delivering electric power and control signals. Such wire, however, tends to be easily tangled and damaged. To overcome this defect, modern automatic pelvic relaxing device are fabricated as single unitary articles each with a main body and a handle which fixedly couples with a top part of the main body. The main body is generally designed to be inserted into the pelvic cavity, whereas the handle is shaped and sized to provide a grip for the user and also incorporates therein various control buttons. Accordingly, the handle consists of a space to form the grip and another space for such buttons. In order to avoid providing an inadvertently long device, however, a part of the handle closer to the main body is recruited to define the grip, whereas the rest of the handle houses the control buttons. It is to be appreciated, however, that all control buttons of conventional automatic devices are either on/off switches or speed control switches, where the on/off switches turn on and off the entire device or a specific movement thereof, and the speed control switches control a speed of the specific movement. In addition, such switches are typically designed to be activated and deactivated each time the user presses or touches them. Accordingly, when the user inadvertently touches any of such on/off and control switches during use, the device may be accidentally turned off, change speeds, and the like. In order to avoid such inadvertent operation, the control buttons have been incorporated as far away from the grip space of the handle, which in turn causes the very inconvenience of requiring the user to change the grip or to move his or her hand to manipulate the control buttons during operation when the user wants to change the speed of movement.
Accordingly, there is an urgent need for a pelvic relaxing system capable of effecting different movements (or same movement) of different parts (or same part) of a body member of such a system to provide different (or same) stimuli to different portions (or same portion) of such a pelvic structure without requiring the user to move his or her hand or without requiring such an user to change a grip. It then follows that the pelvic relaxing system inevitably requires an input unit which enables the user to supply different user inputs thereto without mandating the user to move his or her hand and without changing his or her grip, a control member which monitors various temporal and/or spatial patterns of such different user inputs, and an actuator member which effects various movements of a single part or multiple parts of the body member in desirable temporal and/or spatial patterns in response to such user inputs.